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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329126">Unshielded</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad'>JediDryad</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Unresolved - a Counterpressure Sequel Series [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Corellian Trilogy - Roger MacBride Allen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Rough Sex, Survivor Guilt, at least there's talking, consensual though, post battle feelings, so close now, talking around the truth, the sex still works</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:55:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,609</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the disastrous Corellian insurrection, there was no way two beings with as strained and damaged an association as Luke and Mara could be any comfort to one another at all...or was there? </p>
<p>In Specter of the Past, Mara declares to herself that she and Luke had once been friends and that now she “wasn’t sure what they were.” This final encounter is an attempt to get her to that place at the top of the roller coaster to the happy ending.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading my angsty smut. And thanks to frangipani for being so very inspirational with her writing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Unresolved - a Counterpressure Sequel Series [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1466992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unshielded</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/gifts">frangipani</a>.</li>


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578880">Counterpressure</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani">frangipani</a>.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For the first time, the Jade’s Fire felt empty. </p>
<p>As she stood alone in the cockpit, Mara was struck hard by the reminder that she had come to Corellia with a crew: two young pilots who had signed on to learn the ins and outs of galactic trading and had trusted her to nurture their potential and help build their careers.</p>
<p>They were both unaccounted for. She didn’t even know if they were dead. She wasn’t sure what she was going to tell their families.</p>
<p>She had failed them. </p>
<p>She never should have brought them here. Raised in the Corporate Sector, both Nesdin and Tralkpha were accustomed to battles fought in ledgers, competitive pricing, and flimiswork. For them, the rebellion was the reason there was a meiloorun shortage, or the high price on Bantha skin furniture.</p>
<p>They’d been trained to optimize hyperspace routes and repel pirate interdiction fields. Planetside bombing and armed combat were well outside their experiences and she’d had no business introducing them like this.</p>
<p>Of course that wasn’t entirely true. </p>
<p>Mara had not demanded they come on this mission. When the message cube had forced her to reroute to Corellia, she’d given both them the option to be dropped off elsewhere. She could handle the Fire on her own, and she wasn’t going to force any of them to enter Corellian space if they didn’t want to. They’d agreed. They’d known the risks. She’d been clear.  But how could they have known, really known what they were getting into?</p>
<p>She hadn’t.</p>
<p>And, on some intellectual level, she knew that the Human League was really responsible; but that didn’t seem to matter much at the moment. The feeling that it was she who had gotten them embroiled in something beyond their abilities and gotten them killed was overwhelming her logical reasoning. All she could do was let it in.</p>
<p>So she stood staring unseeing out the viewport. She’d been the only one on her ship more times than not. And she’d loved it, loved the solitude and the self containment,  but not now. Today she could hear the echoes of the laughter of her lost team. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d come to enjoy having them around.</p>
<p>The emptiness was a deep, oozing wound. Healing would not be easy.</p>
<p>And the human cost wasn’t the only problem facing her now. Not only was her delivery schedule a delayed disaster, but, this insurrection would probably result in the opening of Corellia, and a significant portion of her trade had been in items made rare by the impeded access to the system. Now, the market would be flooded. </p>
<p>Mara would have to reinvent her business or go under. She was not ready for that.</p>
<p>And, all she’d done was deliver a message cube in the place of Luke Skywalker.</p>
<p>And then she felt his presence as he entered the ship.</p>
<p>The Jedi Master was here. The last person she wanted to see right now. He’d been impossible to handle during this thing with all of his boundless understanding and compassion. </p>
<p>Couldn’t he see that she needed to stay together to manage what was happening? His beseeching condescension made her want to fall apart. </p>
<p>So understanding of the plight of a former imperial not being trusted. He trusted her, of course. After all, if it turned out everyone’s suspicions were right, he could always use the Force to sabotage her hull plates just before she escaped into hyperspace. </p>
<p>She hated it when he pulled stuff like that. The kind but all powerful jedi. Did he really think he could be both?</p>
<p>He’d come, no doubt, to offer wisdom she didn’t want to hear. A clumsy attempt to comfort the afflicted. He would pontificate on the fleeting nature of life and assure her that it was all the will of the Force, as though that was all it took to make feelings disappear into carefully cultivated peace.</p>
<p>She straightened her shoulders preparing to order him off her ship. It would be deeply satisfying to slap the serenity off his face.</p>
<p>But as she turned around and saw him in the passageway, her angry words stuck in her throat.</p>
<p>Luke Skywalker stood in silence, hands clenched at his sides, knuckles white, eyes shadowed and red-rimmed in the dim light.</p>
<p>There was no aura of detachment, like she had expected, no Jedi robes of office. Just a man in a lumpy black flight suit wearing an expression full of pain and a need so bald she struggled to make her lungs draw air.</p>
<p>His tangled emotions flooded the space between them catching her in their snarls and loops. Something inside her echoed the pain and emptiness he broadcast. His need drew hers to the surface.</p>
<p>She took an entranced step towards him, a small strangled cry escaping her throat. Then they were wrapped up in each other, their urgency fusing their lips together like a magnetic seal.</p>
<p>Latent grief dug in, impaling them on either end of its jagged blade as each reached through it to the other, clinging as though to life.</p>
<p>Breaths mingled and tongues clashed, heartbeats deafening in the insulated silence of the ship hallway.</p>
<p>They gripped one another tightly enough to bruise tender skin. Hard, demanding proof of the flesh.</p>
<p>Show me I’m not dead.</p>
<p>Remind me there is life.</p>
<p>Up against the cold metal of the bulkhead, they struggled with zippers and snaps, seeking the heat underneath. Desperate for touch, on the same unspoken cue, they abandoned the struggle popping buttons and tearing at seams. Clothing was rent to pieces on the floor as fervent hands and lips sought the pulses and places that would set nerves alight and sublimate thought and emotion into sensations exquisite and uncanny.</p>
<p>Bodies that knew what their souls did not.</p>
<p>Beyond conscious consideration, Mara wrapped her naked legs around Luke as he lifted her blindly against the wall. Her recently treated calf scraped his pocket snaps, ripping the bacta patch free,  and she moaned into the pain, latching on to the sensation as an anchor before losing her moorings again as Luke pushed into her with a groan. Pleasure and agony all at once. </p>
<p>Lost on the needles and pins of his movement inside her, she dug her nails into his shoulders and cried out as he set a rough and irregular pace. He slammed her into the wall with each thrust, garbling her nerves with every unpredictable, aching move.</p>
<p>There was no softness here among the barbed edges and heart piercing glances. This was teeth and bone and cold durasteel against the spine. Each touch was filled with anguish.</p>
<p>And yet the pleasure built. Amid the grief, throbbing pulses lanced through her and left her gasping. A strange trembling started in Mara’s middle and ranged outwards. The sensations flooded through her until there was nowhere to go but up.</p>
<p>She cried out in a climax that was equal parts pleasure and pain, and he spilled inside her, collapsing against her with his final jerking movements.</p>
<p>They slid down the wall to the floor, still entwined in one another. </p>
<p>The waves lingered like the echo of a lament.</p>
<p>Luke buried his head in her neck, shuddering with more than the aftershock of his release. His arms were unnecessarily tight around her.</p>
<p>Mara sucked in oxygen and felt raw, as though she’d been flayed, stripped of all protective bravado and pretense.</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” she found herself whispering, almost cooing, “You’re here. I’m alright.”</p>
<p>She wondered how she knew that mattered to him. </p>
<p>“Leia, Han, the kids, and Chewie made it through.”</p>
<p>She left out the others who hadn’t and tried to follow the thread of herself that had decided to say this much, that seemed to think she could comfort a jedi master. The thread stretched into a murky fog she couldn’t comprehend much less follow.</p>
<p>“This time,” he murmured, and he kissed her again, not passionate but desperate,  tongue licking into her mouth. </p>
<p>He tasted like tears.</p>
<p>“Luke,” she whispered, reeling. The way he clung to her went beyond the physical. He leaned into her spirit like she was a life raft and all that kept him above the waves of sorrow.</p>
<p>He’d never felt like this to her before. She’d known him lost and lonely. She’d hated his shell of serenity when she’d known it wasn’t real.</p>
<p>She’d never seen it stripped away.</p>
<p>Mara fought for breath, overwhelmed.</p>
<p>Then Luke stiffened and seemed to draw back into himself. She could feel his shields creep back into place, like a scab.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Eyes downcast as he pulled back and gave her space.</p>
<p>He’d retreated quickly, like he’d feared rejection from her. That didn’t make any sense. He was the one who’d rejected her. </p>
<p>Wasn’t he?</p>
<p>Everything felt off-kilter. It was as though there was something she’d missed in Skywalker, which was ridiculous considering how much time she’d spent on him. Surely she had him figured out by now.</p>
<p>And there was that other feeling, the pull of that murky thread. It wasn’t basic attraction. It felt like a chasm she could fall into, a bottomless yawning chasm.</p>
<p>And he was sorry.</p>
<p>It would be easy to just let him be sorry, to make him feel all the guilt. He had, after all, once again used her to kriff away his grief over a lost love. </p>
<p>Hadn’t he?</p>
<p>She looked at him half naked, eyes downcast. She could feel the chill of his absence on her arms. The look in his eyes when she first saw him in the hallway was burned into her brain.</p>
<p>No, this hadn’t been about the Bakuran senator, any more than he’d spent their night on Yavin comparing her to Callista.</p>
<p>None of it had been like that.</p>
<p>“No,” she shook her head, “I needed this too.”</p>
<p>He snapped up to meet her gaze, and his eyes seemed to get bluer.</p>
<p>Her lungs began to burn again.</p>
<p>Her comlink twittered.</p>
<p>She sucked in a breath and snagged it off her belt where it lay next to her on the floor.</p>
<p>“Jade”</p>
<p>Luke stood up and retrieved his own belt from across the hall.</p>
<p>“Good to hear your voice, Captain,” The wheezy tones of her Mon Cal navigator rang in Mara’s ear like a victory bell.</p>
<p>Her breath left her in a rush.</p>
<p>“Yours too, Tralkpha.”</p>
<p>She cracked a smile that was entirely relief and swallowed a sob.</p>
<p>“It’s really good to hear from you.”</p>
<p>“Made it through,” He acknowledged.  There was a pause, “Nesdin is dead. I was standing right next to him.”</p>
<p>He fell silent.</p>
<p>Mara closed her eyes for a moment, and then said, “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>She could hear him take a deep breath.</p>
<p>“Me too. Can we go home now?”  The emotion in Tralkpha’s voice made it wheezier than usual.</p>
<p>Mara nodded.</p>
<p>“That’s a good idea. Send me your coordinates. I’ll come get you.”</p>
<p>“No, I have transport. Are you at the ship?”</p>
<p>“Affirmative. Sending coordinates.”</p>
<p>She transferred the numbers over.</p>
<p>“I’m at the spaceport,” she added.</p>
<p>“Okay. ETA in 30.”</p>
<p>“See you soon.”</p>
<p>She felt shaky as she set the comlink down again.</p>
<p>All accounted for. One gone. One survivor. The grief would come, but for now,  there was peace in knowing. Her chest felt a little lighter.</p>
<p>Luke stood over her with a smile of his own as though her good news was his as well.</p>
<p>He handed her her rumpled shirt and she pulled it over her head.</p>
<p>She glanced at the ravages around her feet and decided her trousers and basics were lost causes. She tugged her tunic around herself, letting its warmth seep into her. It was a good thing it was a simple pullover or it would likely also be unwearable.</p>
<p>She had not expected that from Luke. Curious.</p>
<p>“You ripped my sleeve,” he noted as he zipped up his flight suit. He showed her the hole in his shoulder seam.</p>
<p>She rolled her eyes and refrained from remarking on his handiwork and how much of her outfit was now scrap. </p>
<p>“It’s an ugly flight suit,” she remarked.</p>
<p>He smirked and ran his hands through his hair, hitched for a moment.</p>
<p>“I hate insurrections.”</p>
<p>Mara chuckled sympathetically.</p>
<p>“Me too” she replied, and took the opportunity to survey him.</p>
<p> “You’ve come out of this one better than you usually do though.”</p>
<p>He was quizzical.</p>
<p>“It’s a rare mission that leaves me patched up and you unscathed.”</p>
<p>“You’re hurt?” he asked, suddenly all worry and guilt.</p>
<p>“Just my leg.” She showed him her half healed calf and he slid back down to the floor next to her. He leaned over to inspect, fingers gently tracing the edges of the wound.</p>
<p>She tried not to react.</p>
<p>“Cut it on some glass when I was rappelling down the side of Coronet tower with your sister.”</p>
<p>He smiled softly. She could tell he liked the image of the two of them scheming their way out of the building.</p>
<p>“She still likes you, you know.” he said quietly, fingers drifting along her calf. His eyes weren’t meeting hers.</p>
<p>“I know. I like her too.”</p>
<p>“Good.” He looked up, “I don’t want to be a wedge between you and my family.”</p>
<p>Is that how she’d been treating him? Possibly. </p>
<p>Definitely.</p>
<p>And he’d noticed.</p>
<p>Her heart thudded in her chest as she scrambled for a way out from under the intensity of his gaze.</p>
<p>“You’re not.”</p>
<p>Luke seemed relieved. He  sat up and settled back against the wall next to her.</p>
<p>Mara felt a new tightness in her chest and pulled on her shields. It was a lie. He could get in her way, probably in more ways than she realized. That needed to end.</p>
<p>You won’t be. she thought determinedly.</p>
<p>He leaned in and dropped a kiss on her cheek. It felt natural and she didn’t like the way her body relaxed at his touch.</p>
<p>“I should get back.”</p>
<p>“Getting while the getting’s good?” She smirked as he stood up.</p>
<p>“Definitely.”</p>
<p>There was a gleam in his eyes that turned her smirk into a real smile for a moment.</p>
<p>“Thanks for...” he paused and blushed slightly, “the good news.”</p>
<p>She shook her head and waved him off.</p>
<p>“Get out of here, Skywalker, before someone comes looking for you.”</p>
<p>“Yes Captain.” He saluted with unmistakable affection.</p>
<p>She nodded instinctively, taken aback as Luke walked back down the passageway, a slight spring in his step.</p>
<p>Mara let out a deep sigh as she gathered what was left of her clothes and the whirling confusion Luke always seemed to leave in his wake. The obnoxious jedi; the chasm of grief; the brash pilot. Insolent farmboy.</p>
<p>And now he was walking back out to face the galaxy as though all was as it should be.</p>
<p>There was no way that was true.</p>
<p>She pressed a hand to her forehead and wondered if she had any pain suppressants left. Her head was starting to throb.</p>
<p>What did any of it mean?</p>
<p>She sighed and admonished herself sternly.</p>
<p>“You have half your crew back.” </p>
<p>She had no right to a bad mood at the moment. </p>
<p> Although what she would do now with her half-a-crew and a business in shambles, she wasn’t sure.</p>
<p>Change was afoot. Change wasn’t always good.</p>
<p>She climbed to her feet to shower and dress before Tralkpha arrived. She would arrange for clearance and they could leave at the earliest opening.</p>
<p>She would figure it out.</p>
<p>**</p>
<p>Six months later, she dropped out of hyperspace over the Kauron asteroid belt in search of the Cavrilhu Pirates’ base.</p>
<p>Karrde had thought Luke might need some help...</p>
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